


In this deep, might as well keep swimming

by Spiceloaf



Series: call it courage [2]
Category: Original Work, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: (headcanon Aizawa as trans too tbh), (it doesn’t come up but Benny’s trans), Cannibalism, Character Study, Enemies to Friends, Gen, I’m so sorry for putting this in the fandom tags, Mild Gore, Nonbinary Character, Quirk Analysis (My Hero Academia), Trans Male Character, a lot of bad stuff is implied but doesn’t happen onscreen so I didn’t tag it, all the nasty stuff is only vaguely described, anyway, ignore me, this is purely self indulgent oc stuff, well more like rivals but w/e
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 19:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17413100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiceloaf/pseuds/Spiceloaf
Summary: Shinobu is a villain, always has been, and (probably) always will be. Whether they’re good or bad or somewhere in between is still up for debate.(Alternatively: For better or worse, I wrote over 5,000 words of oc stuff and finally decided to post something)





	In this deep, might as well keep swimming

**Author's Note:**

> In which Shinobu does not get the guidance and therapy they need because they won’t stop breaking the law long enough to talk to an actual adult, and the other kids are terrible enablers.

The first time they got caught, a bunch of policemen ran in and shot their guns and they climbed out the window and ran far, far away from their house. There was nothing left, anyway.

* * *

Bad things happened to small children alone on the streets, and Shinobu wasn’t any different. Well, okay, a little different. Because most kids didn’t wake up after getting cut in the throat and bleeding a lot. Shaky, already beginning to cry again, they pushed themself up on their elbows and looked down at the sticky brown stuff all over their shirt. They were hungry again.

* * *

Shinobu _loved_ the library. It was warm and dry and full of so much stuff!! They walked in and the ladies at the desk didn’t even look at them twice. After all, they looked like all the other skinny, dirty kids that spent the day here.

Usually, they’d wander between the shelves and pick up any book that had a cool title, but today they were on a mission. Today, they sat down at one of the computers and booted it up. It was already on an open browser, so they began their research.

**what is the humen body made of**

**what ar cells**

**dna**

**ar humens good for you**

**heeling cuts and stuff**

**regeneration**

* * *

So, Shinobu learned a lot about themself as they got older. Their quirk meant they could basically heal anything, but they needed the material to do it with. If they cut out their stomach, they needed to eat stomach cells to fix it. Muscle and skin cells could go anywhere. If they ate stuff beforehand, they could regenerate in seconds in a fight. If they didn’t, they could regenerate slowly, but it would create a “debt” and they’d get really, really hungry. If they waited for an injury to heal before eating, their body wouldn’t fix it because it was already “fixed”.

Most of that didn’t come from the library.

If they waited, it wouldn’t heal. They knew that. They waited and their stump healed and now they didn’t have a left arm, just something ugly and too short. Standing there, looking down at the old man, guts already in their hands, their eye socket throbbed. They needed their eye back; seeing was important. They just needed to take his eye out, and- and… 

They shuddered, and cried, and said _sorry, sorry,_ and they left.

* * *

The first _real_ time Shinobu got caught, they were raiding a morgue. It was pretty incriminating; they were wrist-deep in some guy’s chest, scalpel in hand, with blood matting one side of their hair in weird clumps. This person, with scraggly black hair and a frankly terrifying scarf-weapon, introduced themself by popping out of the vents and drop-kicking Shinobu in the head. 

They woke up maybe two minutes later with their wrist firmly cuffed to a street lamp outside and a headache that didn’t deserve words pounding behind their eyes. The- the guy, Eraserhead, was talking on the phone a little ways away, and _oh,_ they were lying face down on the ground outside the hospital. Okay. They could work with this.

They didn’t escape through any amount of skill, really. A cat tipped a trash can over, Eraserhead looked away, and in that moment they’d dislocated their wrist to free themself from the cuffs and stumbled to their feet. Eraserhead whipped back around to give chase, but in the end it’s hard to catch someone who can jump off of a bridge without (many) consequences.

At least now they knew they were being hunted.

* * *

So maybe they’d unintentionally gotten themself a reputation. After all, it was hard to miss someone who A: regularly broke into hospitals, B: ate people, and C: got up after being crushed under a car. They didn’t really ask for it; it just sort of happened.

When an older, nicely-dressed man approached them and offered his hand, of course they were wary. Nothing but an absolutely shitty time came with men who walked up to kids on the street.

“Hello, are you by any chance the kid called Pieces?” He asked, face hidden in the shadow of his hat. That wasn’t great, either. People who knew that nickname were either heroes or other slum-goers, and he definitely didn’t look poor. They hunched in their stolen hoodie, keeping their eye on his hands.

“Nuh-uh, weirdo. Who is that?” they said. Weirdo huffed a scratchy laugh, like he smoked or something, and put his hands back in his pockets.

“Someone who I’m hoping to make friends with. I run a quiet little shop downtown, and I’m interested in hiring. It’s a good job, too, with additional housing and compensation. Shame I can’t seem to find this kid. Would you be able to point me in the right direction?”

Shinobu felt their stomach clench. This could either be really good, or really, _really_ bad. They were so tired of freezing to death every night, though. “Maybe. Don’t know. What kind of job needs a psycho like Pieces, anyway?” they asked, finally casting a searching stare at his face. Weirdo laughed again, not unkindly.

“Oh, it’s just a delivery service. Noodles and rice, you know how it is. We just need an extra delivery guy, see? And I think this kid fits the bill perfectly. What do you say?” He didn’t stick out his hand again, but they understood what this was. He wanted to make a deal, probably one that would end badly for them.

...Well, they guessed things couldn’t get much worse than they already were. They nodded and dropped their eye back down to study the buttons on his suit. “Yeah, okay. It’s Shinobu. I’m Shinobu, or Pieces, I guess,” they mumbled. The man’s smile grew even larger, and he started walking down the sidewalk while Shinobu struggled to keep up.

“Amazing, wonderful! I am Hashira, and it will be a pleasure working with you. If you come right this way, we can get you started…”

Needless to say, it wasn’t quite a conventional delivery service. The room was warm, though, and the udon was delicious, so if they added killing to their list of sins and sometimes there were million-dollar jewels hidden in the takeout boxes they delivered, well, it was all in a day’s work.

Some combat training, some nifty new gear, and they became Pieces. Not Pieces, the cannibal kid. Pieces, the villain.

* * *

This time, Eraserhead snapped both of their ankles when he caught them. He was actively suppressing their quirk, too, so they couldn’t do anything but shriek and tumble to the ground like a dropped pile of sticks. In seconds he was on them, one boot planted heavily on their backpack while the other crushed their mechanical limb. Through his visor, red eyes stared them down.

“Oi, stay down, will you? You’ve wasted a lot of my time already,” he grumbled, fishing a communicator out of his pocket and raising it to his ear. Tired, hurting, and horribly frustrated, Shinobu blinked back tears and went limp, resigned. A moment of silence as someone presumably picked up, then the man spoke again.

“Hey, I caught the Pieces kid. ...Yeah, got him down, don’t think he’s wiggling his way out this time. ...Two broken ankles, probably some hefty bruising on the ribs, maybe a concussion? There’s some blood there, so… Yeah, okay, but literally nothing else did anything. It worked, didn’t it?” Almost immediately, their stomach flipped. That wasn’t- It probably wasn’t important at this point, they were about to be arrested, but-

“Bold of you to a-assume I’m a _he,_ ” they said, the words out of their mouth before they could really filter them. Concussion indeed. They’d meant it it be a joke, but their voice came out far too tight to be mistaken for anything but serious. Instantly, Eraserhead’s full attention was back on them, and they regretted everything. Seriously, despite all of the scuffles they’d gotten into since he’d started trying to catch them, this was the first actual conversation they’d had with the _pro hero_ and it was half meme _holy shit-_

“Oh? Then what, she?” he said, his voice still that bored, flat tone. It was impossible to tell if he was serious. Honestly he was probably making fun of them, but _he_ was wrong and _she_ was even worse so they hid their face in the asphalt like it mattered with their mask still on.

“They and them, a-actually. Not... Nothing else.”

More silence, several seconds this time, but before the dread could fully settle, the weight on their back shifted the tiniest bit and he spoke into the communicator again. “Kid tells me they’re a they. ...Yeah, thanks. What’s the ETA? ...Mmhm. Maybe talk to Hound Dog about some counselling, too. ...Okay.” 

What that, the communicator clicked off, and it was quiet again. Numbly, Shinobu stared through their bangs across the empty parking lot, watching bugs bounce around the glow of the street lamps. They really didn’t know how to feel about anything, so they just laid there and slowly counted their heartbeat. _One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…_

The weight on their back shifted again, and they didn’t turn to look at Eraserhead as he knelt down, no longer pinning them but close enough to do some real damage if they tried anything. “How old are you, anyway? You’re like, what, eleven? You look like you could be one of my students.” The last part was grumbled, probably not for them, but they answered anyway.

“Fifteen, thanks. You beat up kids for fun?” they huffed. Yeah, provoke him. Great.

“When the kids kill people, I do,” he shot back, dry as the desert. In the distance, sirens started to draw closer, and Eraserhead bent down to haul them up by the back of their suit. “Alright, let’s get the mask off and- _hgk-!_ ”

This time, they weren’t just an orphan. This time, they had _weapons_. No one ever thought to be wary of their sad stump limb (most seemed to avoid looking at it), so no one was ever really prepared for the taser attached to the end of it. Pro hero or not, the man spasmed, then dropped like a sack of bricks. With that, the warmth of their quirk flooded their body, and they were sprinting away on newly-set ankles long before the first responder arrived.

They almost felt bad about it. They hoped he wouldn’t change his mind.

* * *

The scary thing about brain injuries was that even when they healed, some things still slipped through the cracks. Things like names, faces, the specific word for what you used to scrub dishes. They’d long forgotten their family name, which was why they were just Shinobu now. Staring into the bathroom mirror, they had to come to terms with just how scary that reality could be.

They weren’t sure if the face looking back at them was theirs.

Big, wispy white hair? Yes. That was always theirs; the internet said something about stress and melanin and air bubbles. Yellow-brown eye? Absolutely, and the drooping eyelid it was paired with was proof.

The face, though. When they ate a part of someone to use their cells for regeneration, the healed part of them would regrow using pieces of that person’s DNA. It made them look like some sort of Frankenstein’s monster, honestly. Their arms and legs were patchworks of different colored skin, from pale white to olive to rich brown. Their face was relatively whole, just a spot here or there, but they knew for a fact that they’d taken some serious hits to it in the past.

This could be someone else’s face, and they’d never know for sure. It wasn’t a good feeling.

* * *

After that last encounter, and presumably the thing that happened at U.A., Shinobu didn’t see Eraserhead again for a while. Instead, this new group of heroes started showing up. There was a girl with a _really_ nice voice, a guy who (when punched) felt just as soft as he looked, and an _actual creature from hell what the_ fuck.

Seriously, Shinobu didn’t know whether to be insulted that the job of apprehending them had been given to what were obviously heroes in training or terrified because third one seemed to be trying to kill them and Would Not Stop.

So, yeah. Not on great terms with them. Especially not the scary one, but the pretty one was also kind of intimidating. The soft one, though?

He shouldn’t have come after them alone. They stood over him in an abandoned mall, mechanical limb clutching his jacket as they leveled their knife at his throat. In the dim glow of the emergency lights, they could see his face tightened with fear and pain, hand held protectively over the bloody gash on his side. He might have been invincible to blunt force, but cutting things up was their specialty.

Weird, to be on the other side of things. Shinobu was the one in control here, and maybe that was why they gently released his jacket and slowly, carefully backed away. The guy stared at them in undisguised surprise.

“What are you doing?” he asked, scooting back a little farther and eyeing their blade. Shinobu huffed and turned away.

“Leaving.”

“...Why?” Like them, he seemed to have an issue with saying things before he thought them through. They put their knife away and straightened their mask from where it’d been pushed askew during the scuffle.

“Because it’s like midnight, I’m tired, and I want to go home. I’ve got what I need anyway, so why would I stick around? Your buddies are going to catch up eventually, and I’d rather just… not, y’know?”

Whatever else he said, it was lost to them as they took off at a light jog down the hall.

* * *

Once, they overheard Hashira-dono talking with someone in the kitchen. Shamelessly, they eavesdropped.

“...No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“Are you sure? This is your chance to get back at the heroes for their hubris, to make them pay. I know they’ve arrested plenty of your people.”

“Honestly, I’m not really interested. This is a business, not a rebellion. What we do here isn’t pretty, but it’s honest work, and if we get caught, we understand the consequences. What you’re doing is going to cause some big waves as it is. Do us a kindness and keep us out of it. If you’d like, we’re having a special on ramen today?”

“...No, thanks.”

Huh. Uninterested, Shinobu turned back to their soup. When a shadow in the shape of a man left the kitchen and exited through the back door, they thought little of it. If Hashira-dono didn’t want to get involved, it was probably for the best.

* * *

All Might retired. Stuff kept happening at U.A., and Shinobu was almost glad that they weren’t a student there. Whenever they saw the students, or even the heroes trying to arrest them, they always looked tense. Things were changing, and not in a good way, not even for the villains.

* * *

Shinobu didn’t really mean to become an actual, big time villain. When they had been younger, they only ever stole bodies and stuff to help themself. Once they joined Hashira-dono, they were mainly limited to delivering contraband, with the occasional “disappearing” mixed in. Hell, sometimes they even delivered actual food, and that was the nicest.

They weren’t really sure where the change happened. Suddenly, the media seemed to realize they existed, and anything they did was a news story. Crawled out of a dumpster at 2am with bullets being pushed out of their body as they regenerated? Of course some asshole took a picture. Shoplifted three packs of candy and a cute shirt? The security tape was all over the news.

And of course, with the media came attention from the heroes. Seriously, could they just grocery shop in peace without three small-time heroes pouncing on them at once?? And then they had to fight their way out, and that got them even more news coverage. They were becoming recognizable, and this was getting out of hand.

Pieces was an actual villain with a bounty on their head now, and everyone wanted to be the hero who finally brought the cannibal down. Which meant something they were decidedly more upset about.

“I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean for it to get this bad, but I think I should probably leave now.”

“...Yes. Unfortunately, that seems to be the best course of action at this point. The rest of us simply can’t handle the fame, you know how it is.”

“I’m sorry. I really- I’m… I liked being here.”

“And we enjoyed having you, even if circumstances now drive us apart. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry as well.”

“Yeah… do… Do you think I could maybe still order takeout from here sometimes? I’m going to miss the udon.”

“Of course. We’ll even give you a discount- ah.”

“Th-th’nks.”

So now they needed a place to live, and to get that they needed money, and for that they needed a job. But what kind of job wouldn’t get them caught the moment they showed their face?

“Hello, this is the IT help desk. How can we help you today?”

* * *

This was… not great.

They’d gotten on the train and settled in with their grocery bags on their lap and their phone in hand. They weren’t sure when it happened, but the train rattled and they happened to look up and now they were making eye contact with an equally startled-looking Soft Guy, sitting across from them in civilian clothes.

The rest of the car was empty. _Of course_.

Were they going to have to fight? They sure hoped not. Their nose was stuffed and they had a splitting headache, so physical activity was about as far down on their list of things they wanted to do right then as it could be. Slowly, deliberately, they returned their gaze to their phone screen and started tapping aimlessly. _Maybe he’d leave them alone if they looked busy_.

The thought was dumb, but surprisingly it held solid. There was a pause, then a quiet sigh from the seat across from them, and the hero and villain spent the next thirty or so minutes in easy (if kind of awkward) silence. It was… nice. Honestly they… they…

...they fell asleep.

And Benny looked at this person, who honestly acted more like a nuisance than a villain even if he’d seen them eat actual human flesh. Saw the patchwork of scars, the thin limbs, the messy hair and old, worn-in clothes.

_“I’d rather just… not, y’know?”_

His stop came, and Benny stood up and left without a word.

(If Shinobu woke up an hour later and freaked out because not only did they fall asleep in front of a hero, they _missed their stop_ , well, that was their own business.)

* * *

They coughed, and vomited like a soda can’s worth of blood, which made their abdominal muscles spasm _which hurt like they were actually dying and at this point they kind of wished they were-_

Another one of those monsters had shown up. Nomi? Nomo? Some short and harmless name for things that were horrifyingly dangerous. Shinobu had seen it rampaging through the streets and had been right up close to it, no other heroes in sight. Villain or not, they didn’t want to watch it kill innocent people, so they’d stepped in and tried to distract it long enough for the cavalry to come.

Haha. Their quirk was mainly defensive, which was not useful at all in fighting these things. It was kind of like throwing a paper airplane at a bonfire.

The fight ended after maybe a minute and a half when the monster shishkebabed them on a broken street sign pole and moved on. Sure, it couldn’t kill them, _but they couldn’t get off_.

Hopefully, they at least occupied it long enough for the heroes to get here.

For a while, they sort of checked out. Their entire being became nothing more complicated than raspy breathing, tingling numbness in their fingers, and dull waves of pain that would come and go.

Shinobu only really came back to awareness when someone shook their shoulder and the pain was suddenly _not_ dull anymore. They probably shrieked. When their eye finally reopened, it was to the blurry face of the soft guy. His mouth was moving?

“-ey, hey, Dios mio I’m so sorry are you with me? Uh, um, Pieces? Right? Come on you gotta talk to me, shit, uh-“

They took a shallow breath, swallowed back god knows what, and nodded faintly. They couldn’t really tell what face he was making in response, but the warm hand was back on their shoulder.

“Okay, great. _Good_. We’re, uh, we’re going to try and get you off of this, okay? North, she repels iron, like bl-blood, and she’s going to push you up and off of this thing, and I’m going to catch you. It… it’s probably going to really hurt, but we’re helping. Understand?” His voice was shaking, which was funny since he wasn’t the one bleeding everywhere, but it was… not okay, but better.

Shinobu, hearing movement around them in places they couldn’t see, took a chance on speaking in the hopes of distracting themself. “Yeah. H-hey, wha’s y name? Hero name. Rude t’ save s-some’n and-“ aaaand yeah, that really hurt. Like, enough to pass out for a second or ten. Small mercies.

They opened their eyes again when they felt their body setting to work on fixing the hole in their torso. They were alive. They were going to be alright. They… were being carried by a warm pair of arms. More than a little loopy, they tilted their head back to see soft guy again. Huh.

“Oi. Hey. What are you doing?” they wheezed. Startled, he glanced down at them and gripped them a little tighter, even as he kept walking.

“Uh, looking for somewhere safe to leave you I guess?” he ventured, looking around nervously. At their unspoken confusion, he pushed onward. “You left me alone that one time, and you don’t seem all that bad, and I think you saved some people there, and… I don’t know, it looked like that really hurt. I wanted to help you. I’m just going to leave you somewhere, and we can forget it ever happened.”

Seeming to have made his decision, he approached an empty stairwell and gently propped Shinobu up against the wall. They blinked slowly, still foggy from blood loss. “Hmm. You never answered me,” they replied. At his baffled look, they elaborated, “Wanna know your name. Can’t keep thinking of you as ‘Soft Guy’.”

“Oh,” he said, “Uh, I guess it’s Marshmallow Man?” Fitting, they thought. Soft and warm like mash potato. They huffed a laugh, and it only hurt a little.

“Marshmallow, okay. Cool,” they said, and that was that.

Or, it would’ve been, except after that Pieces and Marshmallow got into a contest of sorts. They still fought and chased each other around, but now they made a point to do nice things for the other, each more outrageous than the last. Pieces caught him before he could fall off of a bridge. Marshmallow set their dislocated shoulder in the middle of a fight. Pieces fixed and brought his jacket back to him after it got all torn up during a villain attack. The maniac gave them a scarf _in the middle of a crisis_ because apparently their skin was “too cold, seriously”.

Fuck the media if they thought it was the strangest relationship between hero and villain ever. Shinobu was a _villain_ , they could literally do whatever they wanted with their time. Villains didn’t have to be assholes, just break the law a bunch and laugh maniacally from time to time.

* * *

Shinobu never killed people to eat them. It was just… one of their rules. A way to set them apart from serial killers. Despite popular opinion, they never ate anyone alive, either. They stole bodies from morgues, usually, although security was far tighter than it used to be. Sometimes they wandered around the alleyways until they found some poor person who’d just given up there. It was a city, and it happened. Often, they were drawn to other villain attacks like a moth to flame, because they could either help living victims or take the dead ones.

For a variety or reasons that added up, they hadn’t consumed human meat in several weeks, and they were feeling it. It was almost like having their quirk erased; they felt cold and weirdly hollow all the time. They weren’t starving, but they wouldn’t last in a fight, and that scared them a little. They’d only gotten this far because their quirk made them near invincible.

That, obviously, was when Predator found them.

Shinobu had been resting, sitting on a bus stop bench and watching the rain from under the shelter, when another person joined them. They wouldn’t have thought twice about it if not for the way the person shivered in the cooler night air. They looked up, almost ready to offer their hoodie, and locked gazes with a pair of red-orange eyes that contrasted sharply with the dark bruises and gaunt face they were set in. A little different, less threatening in a school uniform, but this was without a doubt the same person that had left Shinobu with plenty of wounds over the years that would have been fatal to any other person. This person was dangerous, and unlike Marshmallow, wanted nothing more than to end their career.

Tense, ready to run but knowing they wouldn’t get far, they narrowed their eyes and stared Predator down. Predator blinked tiredly, sighed from behind (their?) her half-mask, and sat down heavily next to them. Before they could say anything, she beat them to it, “Whatever. It’s Sunday and I’m not in the mood.”

What did Sunday have to do with it?? They hunched and side-eyed her, but she did nothing but open her phone and tap away at it. They couldn’t be that lucky, right? Well, they weren’t in the mood either, so they rubbed their aching stump and returned to watching the rain. For a while, the patter on the roof and the hiss of cars driving by was the only noise that filled the bus stop. Eventually, though, the tapping next to Shinobu slowed to a stop, and a new tension took hold.

“Hey. I’m… curious. Can I ask you something?” Predator started. Shinobu turned their head sharply to stare at her with their good eye. The hero was looking out across the street with a deliberately casual air, but her spidery hands were picking at her phone case. Despite the lack of actual verbal response, she continued, “This is probably, almost definitely really rude, but what is eating people like? Asking for a friend.”

What were they supposed to say to that?? They had no idea, but their mouth opened anyway. “Not great, honestly. One out of five stars, would not recommend it. I can’t cook it, since that degrades the cells, but trust me, no matter how hard you try, you can’t convince yourself it’s sushi.” Shinobu stopped, suddenly overwhelmed by how ridiculous this conversation was, and couldn’t stop a slightly unhappy, very stressed giggle from escaping. “What kind of question is that? Why the hell do you want to know?”

Predator deflated a little and brought her legs up to hug her knees, still staring at the rain. “I don’t know, man. I’m… different, when I’m using my quirk and doing hero stuff. Sometimes, I think about it. And later, like now, I wonder what would happen if I didn’t have the muzzle as part of my costume. It’s a little fucked up. _I’m_ a little fucked up, I guess.”

Now that Shinobu thought about it, they didn’t really know anything about her quirk. Or her. Or anyone other than Marshmallow and a few famous heroes. Maybe they should head back to the library for research soon. Uncomfortable, they cleared their throat and didn’t respond.

Predator finally looked over at them, and her eyes were gentle, if searching. Like she was looking at a poster in a foreign language and trying to figure it out from the picture alone. “Why _are_ you a villain?” she asked, not quite accusatory. “I mean, sure, your quirk is shitty, but so is mine sort of? We’re pretty sure you won’t starve if you don’t do the cannibal thing, so why not just settle down somewhere you won’t need to heal all the time and be, like, a baker or something? No offense, but you kind of suck as a villain. Too much saving people.”

“Wow, okay, thanks. I mean, why do you think? At this point I’m pretty well known. I don’t really _want_ to go to jail for the rest of my life, which _I would_ , considering all the actual crimes I’ve committed. This is just… kind of how the cards fell, I guess, so I’m rolling with it. Not much else to do, and it’s not bad, anyway. Makes life interesting,” they said, unable to believe this was how their Sunday night ended up. “It’s like having any other job. You don’t really wake up with a goal in mind, like ‘I’m gonna steal as much as I can today’. You just do it because it’s what you do, and you can consider it a good day if you had fun while you were at it.”

Seeming to find the answer acceptable, Predator hummed and returned her eyes to the rain. A few more minutes of quiet, and the bus pulled up to the stop. Predator sat at the front, and Shinobu the back, and they each went home lost in their own thoughts.

* * *

A bad villain, huh? Shinobu would show them a bad villain…

**Security tapes reveal villain Pieces responsible for phallic vandalism of U.A. walls**

This was not what Aizawa needed at six in the morning.

* * *

Occasionally, they wondered what their life would be like if they had stayed a civilian.

Okay, maybe more than occasionally. Maybe often. Maybe they even visualized, from time to time, a world where they became a hero instead.

If they did though, they kept those dreams where they belonged: the quiet darkness that came with the hours between midnight and morning. They were unrealistic at best, and at worst a special kind of torture. They’d been called many things, but a masochist was absolutely not one of them.

Nah, they’d been pretty set on this path from the moment four-year-old them had made a snack out of their mom’s lungs. If there was a heaven or hell, that was probably the moment they’d gotten themself on some god’s shitlist.

Or maybe, they wondered, maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe it was when they’d stolen food from the older homeless man in the alley, dying of hypothermia by the dumpster. Maybe it was when they’d come back two days later to take his long-cold guts, too. Or when they’d first stolen a nurse’s ID to get into a morgue, and come out a whole arm heavier. When they’d looked up at Hashira-dono as he showed them how to use a blade, then taken it to try it out themself. When they’d started stealing things they didn’t really _need_ , like candies and necklaces.

Could it be right then, staring Marshmallow Man down from across the roof of jewelry store, backpack jingling obviously with stolen loot?

Or maybe there wasn’t a point of no return, or it hadn’t been reached yet, and they could just stop being a terrible human being _for once in their life…_

Meh. They’d come this far. 

Full of adrenaline, human flesh, and exhilaration, they ignored his exasperated shout and spun, taking a running leap over the edge of the building.

The three story high building.

...They’d be fine. They always were.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, why are you still here?? Anyway I can guarantee this isn’t the last you’ll hear of these kids. Thanks for humoring me!


End file.
